Animals Quotes

“We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Never break a promise to an animal. They're like babies—they won't understand.”
― Tamora Pierce, Wild Magic

“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
― George Eliot, Mr Gilfil’s Love Story

“We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be –the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.”
― Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

“If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
― Francis Of Assisi

“I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air

“Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.”
― Gene Hill

“Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.”
― Betty White, If You Ask Me

“Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”
― Milan Kundera

“Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable”
― Gary L. Francione

“To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Look, PETA! If God hadn't wanted us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so darn tasty!”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America

“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.”
― Gary Larson

“And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Discipline isn't about showing a dog who's boss; it's about taking
responsibility for a living creature you have brought into your world.”
― Cesar Millan, Be the Pack Leader: Use Cesar's Way to Transform Your Dog . . . and Your Life

“Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.”
― Alfred A. Montapert

“May all that have life be delivered from suffering”
― Buddha

“If he could blush through his fur, he would have.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.”
― Gary L. Francione

“The truck looked like a beater, maybe built in the 1950's, mostly rust on the outside, but a spaceship on the inside.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”
― Temple Grandin

“They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”
― Stephen King, The Long Walk

“Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
...
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
...
But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
...
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fiber from the Brain does tear.”
― William Blake

“A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”
― Charles Darwin

“You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst